From nation wide research done by Rick Barr,MD and Edmund Yang,MD,it was found that between 1994 and 2005 123 children with MRSA went into respiratory failure and needed to be placed on life support, and an alarming 20 of those cases appeared in the last two years of the study. MRSA was found to be 10% more fatal than other illnesses requiring life support. Researchers founds that there is a peak of incidence for infants and then again at the ages of 14 and 15. Less than half of the children with MRSA who were put on life support survived. More research is going to be done but it is obvious that CA MRSA is more infectious and dangerous to healthy, young people and it will be a high priority to find out why and to stop this rate of respiratory failure and death.The rate of infections is still increasing and doctors are seeing too many young people dying.
I hope that this study will stop doctors like my own from saying that CA MRSA is seldom fatal and no one should panic about it. I have heard from many, myself included, that they would rather contract AIDS than CA MRSA, especially than CA VRSA, which is immune to all antibiotics already. There is still no cure for AIDS but at least it is a lot more simple to make sure that you don’t give it to those around you.
Another alarming factor with CA MRSA and children is the numbers of parents who won’t disclose that their children have CA MRSA so their children can go to school without being ostracized. I have read on different MRSA forum sites that the majority of parents would not tell the school if their child had MRSA. This is yet another factor that makes it difficult to avoid CA MRSA.
Our best defense is still thorough hand washing and the use of a hand lotion like The Invisible Armor, advertised on this page, that kills bacterium and keeps killing it for four hours after application. The best treatment for CA MRSA in this country is at The Wound Care Center in Lubbock, Texas. I will be posting more information about The Wound Care Clinic soon.

I just got through reading a lengthy report on the discussions at the Toronto General Meeting for the American Society for Microbiology and about a visit to the only clinic in the US now offering Phage Therapy for MRSA and other bacterial conditions. I was thrilled to find that this clinic is in my home state. The Wound Care Center in Lubbock, Texas is using Phage therapy in combination with other treatments like Hyprerbaric Oxygen treatment and the application of maggots to wounds with incredible success. More amazing still is that this treatment is currently being provided at no charge!
I watched a film clip of a necrotized leg wound being treated with Maggots, and you might be glad that I can find no words to describe the condition of the patient’s wound, but most amazing is that the maggot treatment was both painless and efficient. Maggot treatment is followed by strategies to speed up healing such as phage therapy, gallium(a rare metalic element that is liquid at room temperature),silver wound dressings, lactoferrin. xylitol, bark powder, and honey extracts.

I say a lot about my disappointment in this country for not giving CA MRSA more publicity and not announcing that we are at war with a deadly enemy not just in hospitals, gyms, tattoo parlors or among the poor but a war that endangers every one of us. BUT my hat is off to the United States for having this ground breaking clinic within its borders. So far I only know of one other clinic in the world offering Phage Therapy located in the Republic of Georgia and I have been green with envy since hearing of it there.

It can be only a matter of time before Lubbock, Texas announces their work and changes the world for the better for all of us. I read every week about a new antibiotic being approved for treating MRSA as the pharmaceutical companies scramble to come up with something that will overshadow Phage Therapy but it cannot be done. All they can offer us is more of the same problems just farther down the road. Look for and invest in Phage Therapy and you will be investing in the only viable future for mankind at this time.

I read a lot of articles every day about different places researching their cases of MRSA to find that they are growing at an alarming rate and all of the time they are amazed and frightened by these findings but I don’t see anything being done differently to change the course of this epidemic. We sit and wonder what is making this happen while not doing anything different to stop it. What could be done?? There could be a lot more national coverage until every household has heard the word MRSA at least once. If I go out and ask I will find that a smaller percentage of the people will know what MRSA is than the number of people already carrying the disease in their own nose. Talk about looking at what is right under your nose! The articles making the news wire right now are about a study conducted in Chicago that says that they have a problem with the rate of MRSA growth among the poor but they only surveyed the hospitals frequented by the poor for their results. What bunk!! And they give the list of people most susceptible still as those who frequent gyms, athletes, needle users, people who get illegal tattoos, people in prison, the poor, and the unclean leaving those not a member of one of those groups feeling falsely safe. More bunk. When is this country going to get real about what is going on and really do something? Will we wait until the president himself is stricken before we admit it is a problem here? And as the problem grows without public notification more and more victims are keeping their illness a secret because they don’t want to be ostracized by an ignorant public. Not to mention that it is still very difficult to get correct information or treatment even if you are a victim. I’m rambling with this but I am angry, too. I shouldn’t be running an obscure blog to notify what few people I can attract and surprising people with what I say. My blog should by now be redundant and ignored. Everyone should already know anything I have to say about MRSA. Things like the new coating they make for incisions from a patients blood that makes them heal faster to lessen the chances of them getting MRSA should be a big news item and not something I dug up yesterday from an obscure news feed. MRSA. A disease anyone can catch from anyone anywhere doing anything that can KILL you. Why is this already destined to be something we will all wonder why something wasn’t done about sooner? Why do so many of us feel that no one cares and no one is listening yet? Why can more people name the top ten Idols than know the word MRSA? What is wrong with this picture?

I just responded to a letter in the MRSA Resources forum about a woman who had been forced to quit her job because her co-workers and employer were afraid of getting MRSA from her even though she is very careful with her disease and only returned to work after she was outbreak free. I have thought about this issue a lot and believe many people are going to have to decide how they feel about MRSA in the workplace as the epidemic spreads. I don’t think our disability system is prepared to handle everyone carrying MRSA, yet I don’t think we are prepared to have our dinner served by someone with MRSA either. We dealt with this when AIDS came around and, who thought anyone would be saying this, but MRSA can be more frightening than AIDS since it is so much easier to transmit from one person to another. More and more people are coming to the conclusion that they will have to just keep their illness a secret as we push them out of their present jobs and where will that leave us? We need more education about MRSA and how to avoid it and we also need to instill enough fear in people that they take at least the number one thing that could save their life seriously. Hand washing. Real hand washing. Not the kind where you get soap on your hands and rinse it off but the kind where you wash your hands thoroughly with warm water for as long as it takes to sing Twinkle Twinkle. Places like gyms need to not only have a sign up telling people to wipe down the equipment but they should mention the dangers of MRSA as well so it will be taken seriously and not just as a polite thing to do. Even the people who have MRSA are seldom given any information on how to protect others so the education has to be given from both sides for us all to continue to live together. We’ve come too far to revert back to placing people in Leper Colonies again. We either have to learn to work together or be ready to support a fast growing population of people with CA MRSA. Education is our only hope right now and a lot of it can be free. Word of mouth has always been considered one of the best and least expensive ways of advertising so speak up. Tell everyone you know. Make noise. Make the news. Make something happen to save us all.

The Daily Mail in the UK announced today that there is a new invention on the market to treat MRSA they have dubbed a miracle water called Dermacyn. It is sprayed on wounds and is a chemically altered version of salt water containing negatively charged particles that kill microorganisms by punching a hole in their cell walls leaving human cells alone because they are too closely packed to be killed. They claim that it will not harm you to drink it although it is recommended only for external use at this time.
I like the idea of this treatment being sprayed on eliminating touching the wounds and risking further spread of the disease as well as causing the person pain touching their already painful wound.
So far, my favorite new products on the market for MRSA remain StaphAseptic and The Invisible Armor but this one could become another if I find it is available over the counter in the US as it is in the UK.
Let’s not forget the old tried and true MRSA killer either, plain old tea tree oil, an ingredient in StaphAseptic.

I’m getting a little confused in the controversy over whether or not or when to treat someone with CA MRSA. I took Jami to see my doctor and Dr. Rosman didn’t want to treat Jami with oral antibiotics even though she was in the midst of an outbreak. It was obvious that Dr. Rosman had done some more research on CA MRSA since I first saw her and mentioned my daughter, but even she seemed a little unsure of what she was doing and not doing. Her final decision after a lot of going back and forth with me was to prescribe Bactroban, a nasal treatment @ $90 a treatment, and if Jami continues to break out she will do a culture next time and prescribe an antibiotic from those results. What I fail to understand is why she didn’t culture the ones Jami had that day?? Was it just to get us to pay for another visit? Because for the life of me I can’t figure out that part but I was exhausted with trying to get her to do anything for Jami. She said that she checked and they aren’t supposed to treat with oral antibiotics unless there are repeated outbreaks for fear of causing more resistance to antibiotics. I understand that but Jami has been breaking out almost constantly for ten months already!!!!! Is that not long enough? NO answer from the doctor. I know, I need to take her to a Disease Control specialist but the cost is what is holding me back right now. Once I get her signed up for county aid the county will pay for a specialist but that will take up to two more months. Another thing I don’t understand about not aggressively treating CA MRSA on diagnosis is that the people with it are walking Typhoid Mary’s spreading it everywhere they go and it seems like that would be of some importance to stop!

If the above sounds confusing and poorly put together it is because the whole doctor visit was the same. I truly wasn’t prepared for objections to treating her when the doctor saw a fresh outbreak going on with several boils already ready to drain!

I did get a sample of the new, alcohol free, Body Armor lotion that protects the skin form MRSA for four hours for Jami and it is a big relief as her hands are dry and peeling from all of the alcohol in ordinary hand sterilizers. I highly recommend this product to everyone!

A new antibiotic that will treat MRSA is scheduled to hit the market in just six months! Of, course, there is the slim chance that something could go wrong in those six months, but I’m doubtful that it will since the study on it was done om 1,600 patients with very good results. A pharmacist once told me that some drugs have hit the market after only being tested on 200 people so 1,600 sounds pretty secure to me! The drug is called Cephtobiprole and was created by a collaboration between Basilea Pharmaceutical LTD and Cilag GmbH International, a Johnson and Johnson company. Another Johnson and Johnson company, Ortho-McNeil, will distribute the drug.